Alright, figured I’d pick the brains of others who have had the joys of rodent infestations in their classic cars. I’ll put a TLDR if you wanna skip the boring time context. 

For a bit of context, I had the car put away for the winter in my partially renovated barn. Great! Stayed out of the weather all winter on a concrete pad and the trickle charger kept the battery ready to go for spring time pants browning! Now this winter has been different though, as my area has recently had an uptick in pack rats. My barn isn’t really well sealed, and the previous owner decided the truck could use some mystery angle grinder speed holes. I’m sure you can figure out what happened next here.

Now, luckily for me (or unluckily for the car) I had previously gutted this car when I ended up with it because it sat for nearly 20 years as a mousey paradise. I completely gutted it once I was getting it back on the road to clean it. For lack of a better term it’s essentially a tin can with some old Fibercraft buckets and the rear seat currently. I’ve been through this rodeo before, but not to this scale.

I dragged the car out, and gave it a quick glancing once over just to see the extent of the damage in the sunlight. Without digging deeper (or actually energizing the car) it looks like most of the wiring went unscathed, just the modern tasty speaker wires in the trunk seem to have gotten executed. Once the car is cleaned out I’ll look at them closer though, 0 chance I’m trusting a key turn until then.

—-TLDR actual advice bit here!—-

Anyways, the trunk has been de-pokey nestified, but now i’m left to deal with the actual rodent shitfest. The car has been sitting outside with the trunk popped and windows down to try and at least get some airing out going on the last few weeks.

I’m wondering if there’s a good order of operations here besides just gut it (again) and go to town cleaning. No carpets or headliners to deal with luckily, and under the hood went unmolsted (I was smart enough to keep that propped open when I was trickle charging it). Should I go at the thing with a pressure washer? Just keep it to scrubby brushes and disinfectants? We’re talking spooky levels of rat dookie here. PPE precautions will definitely be taken, ya boy is definitely not down with a mouth full of packrat’s finest.

What would be the best way to tackle under the dash? I haven’t really torn into a car of this vintage on that scale, and there’s some flavors waiting in there when I popped the glovebox (which became an open hole and home to the Pioneer power amp my dad shoved in there in the 90s). 

Any advice for tackling this is definitely appreciated, and definitely hit me with questions if I no doubt missed anything.